The company’s top dog, Jerry Shen, told DigiTimes that it will arrive by the end of 2009 at the earliest. Also unexpected (and less confirmed): the report says “industry sources” believe MSI is sniffing out the E-Book space, too.

Asus’ Eee range is far from premium, so I’ll be curious to see if it ends up with 3G like the new Sony Reader Daily Edition, existing Kindle 2 and DX, or the upcoming Plastic Logic eReader.

And you tell me, where does an e-book reader fall on your Christmas wish list? Have you even seen that many people actually using them out and about?